The Probability of Violet & Luke (The Coincidence #4)(36)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

His hand tenses on my leg. “For what?”

I open my eyes and stare at the wall. “For turning all psychopath on you last night.”

“You didn’t go all psychopath on me last night. You had a f**king panic attack, which I totally get. Trust me. I’ve had my fair share of them.” A pause, then his hand glides back up my body and neck, residing on my jawline. He turns my head toward him, forcing me to rotate my body with it so I’m facing him. He looks so worn out, the circles under his eyes even more defined and his skin even paler than usual. He’s shirtless, the blanket covering just his bottom half so I can see his bare chest. He’s still in shape and everything, but he looks like he’s lost some weight. It’s starting to concern me, like maybe he’s not taking care of himself enough with his diabetes, but how do I bring it up to him? “I want you to tell me what happened with Preston.”

I shake my head, my lips trembling as I smash them tightly together, weak just with the mention of his name. “I can’t.”

“I know it’s hard,” he says, his fingers spreading across my cheek. “But I need you to tell me… if he hurt you then I—”

I cover his mouth with my hand. “I don’t want you hurting him,” I state firmly. “And not because I care about him at all—I don’t want you getting hurt.” I wait a minute then lower my hand.

He’s grinding his teeth in frustration. “If I promised you I wouldn’t hurt him, would you tell me?” It seems like it takes a lot of self-control for him to say it.

He wants me to willingly talk about my problems? There’s a new one. “I hate talking about stuff aloud,” I admit. “Don’t you think it’s so much easier just to keep stuff to yourself? Especially when you’re the reason it happened it the first place? I mean, it’d be pretty pathetic for me to whine about anything that happened when I walked straight into it.”

He considers what I said, then stuns me when I see a flicker of anger transpire in his eyes. “I used to think it was better to keep things bottled up,” he says. “But I’m not so sure anymore. Not since I met you… And you running away, to Preston’s, that wasn’t your fault. Yeah, I wish you would have stayed…but completely get why you left.”

“I should have came back after you called the police and turned your mom in… things would have been less horrible if I had,” I mutter, then swallow hard, my mind racing with every bad choice I’ve made. “It wasn’t like I fought him or anything. It was our deal while I stayed there.” Air in, air out. Breathe. “He gives me a roof over my head and in return I have to touch him… at least that’s what it was in the beginning. But then a week ago, I messed up a stupid deal and he got super pissed and kind of forced me down on my knees to,” I make a motioning gesture with my hand, “Well, you know. And that’s where the bruises came from. I hit my leg on the bed when he was shoving me to my knees,” I say. Luke’s face turns from pale to red, his breathing quickening, his fingers going stiff on my cheek as if battling the urge not to ram his fist into something. I feel the need to add something. “You can’t get mad at him. In fact, you should be mad at me. I should have never gone back to him. I would have been better going and living out on the streets, but I was too scared to do that again and honestly, for some reason, I didn’t want to be completely alone in the world yet and Preston is the only family I have, as f**ked up as that is. I was weak and I know better than to let myself get that way.” I shrug and continue. “The stuff that happens to me—the messes I get myself into—are my fault. In fact, it’s kind of my thing. I’m careless and I don’t think things through and this is where it’s gotten me. Homeless, famililess. And now I’m paying for my mistakes.”

“You say that like you deserve it?” He’s baffled, his anger fading to shock.

“Sometimes I don’t think I do,” I admit for the first time aloud. “I think about all the times I was moved from home to home. I always pretended that it didn’t matter—that it was them not me. But I think it was more of a defense mechanism than anything… I could have tried harder to be a better child, but I was too stubborn and had too much rebellion in me.”

He stares at me, his expression unreadable, one hand on my hip, the other on my face. I can feel his pulse throbbing through his fingertips. It seems as if he’s searching for the right words, but I don’t want him to say anything. I don’t want to hear how he thinks that’s not true, how I’m better than that, how it was everyone’s fault but mine.

“I don’t want a pity party,” I tell him. “I was just saying my thoughts aloud.”

“I wasn’t going to give you a pity party,” he replies, reminding me of the reason I was drawn to him in the first place. “I was going to say that when we get back to Laramie, I want you to stay with us.” When I start to open my mouth to say, well, I’m not sure, he talks over me, “I’ll sleep on the sofa and you can have the bedroom. Seth and Greyson will be completely fine with you being back. In fact, Seth even said something about missing you the other day, but don’t tell him I told you that.” He pauses as if waiting for me to agree, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. “And if you want, we can work out some kind of schedule where we don’t have to be in the house at the same time, except for when we’re sleeping.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to run away from your problems. Running back to Preston felt easier than going back to Luke. Yes, it has to do partly with who his mother is, but I think there was always more to it than that. I think it was easier to run away, because it meant running away from what I was feeling. That night he told me who his mother was hurt so badly that I knew I was falling for him. Hard. I’d never had such powerful emotions toward someone before and that scared me.

“What about this thing with your… mother?” I ask, wincing as I remember the one and only night I met his mother, how crazy she looked as she sang that song with my parent’s blood on her clothes. “What if something happens, like they arrest her? Won’t that make things weird? More weird than they already are?”

He looks baffled, his jaw dropping, his eyes widening. “I f**king hope they arrest her. In fact I’ve been waiting for them to my entire life.”